


distorted sweet criminal

by thunderylee



Category: Johnny's WEST, Kansai Johnny's Jr., SixTONES (Band)
Genre: Canon Universe, Gen, Horror, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2019-01-15 07:17:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12316356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderylee/pseuds/thunderylee
Summary: Hamada would go to any length to protect his juniors.





	distorted sweet criminal

**Author's Note:**

> reposted from agck.

_Wa-ha-ha!_

The beginning of the old Eito song rouses Hamada from his mundane bill sorting. Who’s emailing him at two in the morning? Quickly, he reaches for his phone and scrolls open the new message, thinking the worst. Someone’s hurt or in trouble. He’s not exactly group mother, but he’s the second oldest and Junta is basically useless during emergencies. They always joke that Junta would be the first one to die in the zombie apocalypse.

_I know what you did last summer_.

The words flash on his screen just like any other message. He doesn’t recognize the return address, a random assortment of letters and numbers that make no sense. There are no emojis, no “just kidding!”, and no follow-up email to elaborate. Just one sentence.

It would be funny if he didn’t have a guilty conscience.

For the most part, Hamada is a good person. He helps the elderly cross the street, carries heavy things for anyone who looks like they need it, and always holds the door open for the person behind him. It’s not male chivalry as much as the general manners ingrained into him at a young age; his bandmates often tease him about being too nice, especially toward other men. Politeness knows no gender, he teaches them, but naturally they don’t listen.

So when a junior shows up at his door with a shovel and a body bag, Hamada will take that secret to the grave he dug. He hadn’t even asked any questions—just looked at Hirano Sho’s tear-streaked face and grabbed his keys. The two had grown quite close during _Shark_ filming and Hamada knew before Sho opened his mouth that it wasn’t his fault. The man had been drunk, stumbling right in front of Sho’s bicycle, and Sho couldn’t swerve out of the way fast enough. They were on a sharp hill and the man had rolled all the way to the bottom, bones cracking in a way that haunted Sho for months afterward. The man was dead upon inspection.

Probably Sho could have left him there and pretended he had no involvement, or called the police and told the truth, but he was scared. He thought he’d done something bad and would go to jail for the rest of his life. Hamada remembers being seventeen—everything is so much more dramatic, especially when you’re constantly in the spotlight.

The summer rain had washed away most of the evidence, though it made digging the grave much more difficult. If crime dramas have taught Hamada anything, it’s that bodies thrown into the river always get found and investigated, and so he found himself in a sparse forest in the middle of the night with a shovel.

Looking back on it now, it was miraculous that they had gotten away with it with as sloppy as they had been. They had just thrown Sho’s bicycle into the dumpster, the front wheel bent beyond repair, and it was too hot to even think about gloves. Sho had blood on his clothes from trying to revive the victim and those were just discarded too. Anyone who looked in Hamada’s garbage would have been instantly suspicious. It took three months for the smell to completely leave his car.

But no one ever looked. Hamada spent weeks scouring the news for any sign of a missing man and saw nothing. He’d told Sho that since they’d given him a proper burial, God would forgive them, and Sho believed him. After the summer ended and their respective work piled up, Hamada started to relax. Life went back to normal.

They never spoke of it again. No need to freak the kid out anymore than he already was. If Hamada acted like everything was fine, so would Sho. Hamada has proudly watched his junior gain popularity over the past year, even earning his own junior unit.

Now the message taunts him, a firm reminder of what they’d done and that someone else could know about it. Then again, it could just be a joke, one of the other members playing a prank after too many beers, with no idea that their harmless words would trigger a traumatic memory.

Oddly enough, the first person that comes to mind isn’t old enough to drink. Kotaki doesn’t need liquor to be devious and Hamada’s already dialing his youngest member’s number before he remembers what time it is.

“‘ello?” Kotaki slurs, clearly half asleep. “Hama-chan?”

“Non-chan, did you just send me a weird email from an anonymous account?”

Even as the question leaves his lips, he knows it wasn’t Kotaki. Kotaki wouldn’t go through all the effort of creating a fake email address just for a prank. He’d send it from his own account and tease Hamada with the knowledge he doesn’t actually have until Hamada confessed something lame like stealing Shige’s hair gel. Anonymity isn’t Kotaki’s style.

Predictably, Kotaki’s ‘no’ sounds confused. And concerned. “Is everything okay?”

“What’s wrong?” a familiar voice asks in the background, a little deeper than usual, and Hamada’s eyes fly open. “Who is it?”

“Hama-chan,” Kotaki tells his overnight companion, followed by some shifting until Kotaki is speaking into the mouthpiece again. “I didn’t send you anything, I swear. I’ve been sleeping. Ask Shori.”

“We’ve been sleeping,” Shori chimes in, then laughs. “Well, mostly.”

“Oh my god,” Hamada grumbles. “I’m gonna pretend I never called you.”

A pair of giggles answer him and he clicks off the phone. Damn hormonal teenagers. The message from before shows up on his screen again and he stops short. Outside, thunder rumbles and Hamada rolls his eyes at how horror movie cliché his life is right now. If he had shutters, they would start banging against his windows and scare the shit out of him.

Car tires squeal instead and Hamada’s heart jumps into his throat. This is ridiculous. Somebody has to be messing with him. There’s no reason why anyone would wait a whole year to confront Hamada about what happened last summer.

Has it even been a whole year? Hamada checks the date. As of midnight, it has been exactly one year. The actual time is a bit fuzzy, but he knows it was after midnight because Sho was worried about being caught out past curfew.

_Wa-ha-ha!_

The alphanumeric email address flashes again and Hamada clicks it out of habit. This time there is an attachment, a grainy picture of two men carrying a large, narrow bag toward an open grave. It looks like it was taken from such a distance that the zoom feature lowered the quality, in the direction of the neighborhood behind the forest where they’d buried the victim.

Despite the pixelation, Hamada recognizes his own face.

_Happy Anniversary_ , the caption says, along with a cake emoji.

“Who is this?” Hamada speaks as he types. Now he’s sufficiently creeped out, spinning around his empty house like someone’s going to jump out of his closet in a _Scream_ mask. He should be more concerned about the police showing up, but he’s not thinking clearly.

Mindlessly, he flicks on every light switch he can find. It’s too bright for his tired eyes, but he feels safer. At least until lightning crashes so close that he’s not entirely certain that it’s not God punishing him for his misdeeds.

_Wa-ha-ha!_

“I gotta change my ringtone,” Hamada mutters to himself as he swipes the screen.

_Someone who can ruin your life by sending this to the fuzz._

Hamada’s next thought is to call Sho, see if Sho’s getting these messages too, but he stops halfway down his contact list. Sho would have called him in a panic if he had any inkling of suspicion that someone else knew what they’d done. Besides, only Hamada’s face was visible in the picture; the person harassing him probably doesn’t even know Sho was involved. Better to not scare him for no reason.

_If you were gonna do that, you would have done it already_ , Hamada types out, the logic seeping into his brain as the words appear on his screen. _What do you want from me?_

Taunting his accuser might not be the best course of action to take, but it’s too late to stop the transmission. Hamada clicks around the advanced settings, hoping to find some identifying information with his limited computer knowledge, but all he learns is that the email was sent through the same network that basically everyone in Japan uses.

_Your reputation_.

Hamada frowns. Nothing about this makes sense. If he were being blackmailed, this person would want money. Even if he quit Johnny’s, there’s no way he could ascertain that this person would take his spot. Honestly, they probably wouldn’t bother to replace him at all. He wasn’t even supposed to be there to begin with.

He opens a reply box and starts to type, but something catches his eye. The advanced settings are still on, so he can see the IP address he’s sending from as well as the one he’s receiving.

Both sets of numbers are exactly the same.

This person is connected to his wireless router. Which means he’s in _this house_.

“Hello?” Hamada calls out, stepping carefully toward the stairs. He hadn’t thought anyone was here when he got home earlier this evening, but he doesn’t make it a habit of searching every room upon arrival. Perhaps he should start. “Is anyone here?”

A door slams upstairs and Hamada’s torn between going after it and getting the hell out. They always make fun of the people in the movies for running up the stairs when they’re being chased, but Hamada would be the one doing the chasing in this situation. He looks at his staircase, wondering if he’s actually brave enough to confront the intruder.

_Wa-ha-ha!_

“ _Dammit_ ,” Hamada swears, nearly jumping out of his skin at the sound. His hands shake so badly that it takes three tries to open the message.

_If you go to the police station right now and confess, I’ll let you live._

Hamada is very, very glad he didn’t run upstairs. Let him live? Does that mean this person is armed? Hamada is tempted to call the police right now, to hell with his own incrimination. He’s man enough to admit when he’s scared and right now he’s fucking terrified. He didn’t do anything wrong. He was just protecting his junior.

Carefully he opens his front door, half expecting someone to jump out at him. There’s no one out there, not even a passing car, just the dim streetlights that only provide enough light for him to see where he’s going in the steady rain. He doesn’t bother locking the door, since that apparently doesn’t keep anyone out anyway, but his keys jingle at his hip. He silently apologizes to his neighbors for making so much noise so early in the morning, but he wants it known that he’s out here.

A motorcycle revs in the distance and Hamada thinks nothing of it. He hears motorcycles all the time during the day, admires them. He’s been told he looks good on them, but he’s wary about riding one after _Shark_. Ryuusei would give him a hard time for sure.

The sound gets closer and Hamada turns to see a single headlight pointing right at him, hopping the curb to speed on the sidewalk. A split-second decision has him diving into someone’s bushes, sharp twigs attacking him instead of tires. His foot kicks the side mirror and his heart pounds with how close he’d been to getting hit, deliberately run over by whoever’s after him.

A sharp squeal leads to a crash and Hamada hears a colorful string of swear words from a voice so unlikely that Hamada pokes his head out of the bushes to see for himself.

“Shit, shit, _shit_!” Tanaka Juri exclaims frantically, wringing his arms next to the open car door. “My mother will kill me if I have to call her for bail money. I’m the good son!”

“Forget your mom,” Morimoto Shintaro grumbles as he storms out of the passenger side, making a feeble attempt at shielding himself from the rain. “ _I’ll_ kill you if you get our group disbanded before we even debut!”

“Do you two want to keep your fucking voices down?” another voice hisses, and Matsumura Hokuto joins them in front of the severely dented hood. “We need to call the police.”

“On it,” Yuugo Kouchi says, much to the dismay of Juri and Shintaro as he pulls out his phone and puts it to his ear.

“Guys…” Kyoumoto Taiga says softly as he approaches the overturned motorcycle and kneels down by the unmoving body. “It’s Bun-chan.”

Hamada blinks as all six of the juniors’ faces take on a solemn expression. He can’t believe it. Hamanaka Bunichi, who is technically his senpai, had been the one behind this? Come to think of it, the forest where Hamada and Sho had buried that man was by the community where Bunichi’s grandmother lives. He visits her every summer. But why would he want to hurt Hamada?

While the kids argue about what they’re going to tell the police, Hamada detaches himself from the shrubbery and looks around. Porch lights are starting to turn on, concerned neighbors woken by the crash. Sighing, he stands up to his full height and prepares himself to be the adult here. Someone has to.

“Hamada-senpai!” Jesse notices him first, his usually flawless face red and streaked with tears. “Senpai, please help us, we did something really bad.”

“ _Juri_ did something really bad,” Shintaro corrects. “I’m an innocent.”

“Hamada-senpai, you’re bleeding,” Taiga notices, instantly pressing a handkerchief to Hamada’s face. “You look like you fell into a blender.”

“Listen up,” Hamada says quietly. His voice must be sterner than he intended, because all six of them give them his full attention and Taiga even stops dabbing at his cheeks. “We’re going to do the right thing here and tell the truth.”

_Because I didn’t do it back then_ , he adds mentally as they nod obediently. Then he launches into the events of tonight, how Bunichi had been hiding in his house and lured him outside just to try and run him down. He conveniently leaves out the emails and pictures, along with anything having to do with last summer. These juniors are not whom he needs to confess that to.

“Why would Hamanaka-kun be after you?” Shintaro asks, more out of curiosity than accusation.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Juri snaps, pushing his wet hair out of his face. “Resentment. Hamada-senpai debuted while Hamanaka-senpai didn’t. The four original members of Johnny’s West went to bat for the other three, but not him. He got shafted.”

Hamada lets that theory sink in as he kneels down next to Bunichi, carefully unfastening the helmet to see his colleague’s face. Bunichi had grown up into such a handsome man, not that much older than Hamada himself. They had been Kansai Juniors together, friends even, though admittedly they hadn’t hung out much since Johnny’s West debuted. Last Hamada knew, Bunichi was happy for them. He’d congratulated them along with the other Kansai Juniors who were left behind.

“He’s dead,” Hamada reports, two fingers pressed to Bunichi’s neck to feel nothing but bones where they shouldn’t be. “I think he broke his neck when he fell.”

A choked sob sounds from behind them and Hamada looks up to see Kouchi pulling Juri into a tight hug, telling him everything’s going to be okay, it was an accident, he saved Hamada-senpai anyway. The sight warms Hamada’s heart amidst the horror of the last few hours.

While they wait for the police, Hamada slips Bunichi’s phone out of his pocket, pleased to learn that he wasn’t armed after all. The others are fussing over Juri who’s in the middle of a spectacular breakdown, paying no attention as Hamada removes the memory card and presses the factory reset. He won’t be able to prove that Bunichi had sent him threatening messages this way, but the evidence against Hamada far outweighs the benefits.

The bushes must have done a number on Hamada, because the next thing he knows is lying in a hospital bed with gauze covering nearly every visible surface of his skin.

It’s daylight. And Hirano Sho is by his side.

“Wha…?” he starts to ask, but his voice is thick with sleep.

“I’m going to confess,” Sho announces, his shock of blond hair offsetting his traditional high school uniform. “I don’t want to lie anymore, so I hope you won’t be mad that I have to list you as an accomplice.”

Hamada sighs. “It can’t be helped.”

“I don’t want anyone else to get hurt,” Sho says so strongly that the parts of Hamada that aren’t in pain swell with pride. “You can’t protect me forever.”

“Did you grow up when I wasn’t looking?” Hamada asks, and Sho hides a smile. “How did you know this had to do with that?”

Sho stares at him. “I didn’t. What happened to Juri-kun is the exact same as what happened to me, only they were smart enough to report it instead of cover it up. I thought it might be karma. The two were actually connected?”

Hamada fills him in on the details and watches Sho’s eyes grow rounder with each word. He has Sho look for his phone and realizes it’s at home on the table by the door, where he’d never grabbed it before leaving to turn himself into the police.

“There’s a memory card in my jeans,” Hamada remembers, and Sho starts to look through the pockets of the discarded garment folded neatly in a plastic bag with the rest of Hamada’s clothes. “Put it in your phone.”

Sho follows directions and frowns as he swipes his screen. “SixTONES-senpai said that Hamanaka-senpai was trying to kill you?”

“That’s sure what it looked like,” Hamada answers. “It just doesn’t seem like his character, though.”

“I think you need to see this,” Sho says carefully, walking over to the side of Hamada’s bed. He holds his phone where they can both see and scrolls through picture after picture.

Every one is of Hamada. Magazine shoots, video screencaps, private pictures Bunichi must have shot when they were all out together. They date back before last summer, before Johnny’s West debuted, probably before Bunichi had even bought that phone. If it wasn’t for a few folders of Bunichi’s family and pets, Hamada would think the memory card belonged to one of his devoted fans.

“He loved you,” Sho says. “He always spoke so highly of you. I can’t see why he would ever want to hurt you, unless…”

“Unless?” Hamada prompts.

“Unless he found out what we did and was disappointed in you?” Sho guesses. “Maybe it didn’t fit with the image of perfection he had for you. I hear love makes you do drastic things.”

“It does,” Hamada assures him. “I don’t recommend it.”

Sho’s laugh seems out of place considering the situation, but it only hurts a little bit for Hamada to smile.

“What’s gonna happen to Juri?” Hamada finally asks.

“Suspended license, they think,” Sho tells him. “Hamanaka-senpai’s family isn’t pressing charges, so it’s staying within the agency. You know how that old man can make bad things just disappear. Everyone’s praising Juri-kun for being honest.”

He’s pouting and Hamada reaches out to gently touch his arm. “Let’s be honest too.”

Sho nods firmly. “An officer wanted to take your statement as soon as you were awake.”

“Stay here with me,” Hamada says. “We’ll tell them everything.”

“I’m sorry, Hamada-senpai,” Sho blurts out, clearly holding back tears. “I dragged you into this mess, and now you’re all banged up and in trouble because of me.”

“I’m counting on a reduced sentence on account of my good looks,” Hamada jokes.

Miraculously neither one of them are arrested, though Hamada has a feeling that Johnny has just as much control over the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department as he does the national media channels. He expects a lecture, but it’s just like any other meeting.

Basically, Johnny tells them they should have kept their mouths shut. Bunichi wouldn’t have gotten very far with just one picture. Hamada leaves the boardroom feeling like he was directly responsible for Bunichi’s death simply for listening to him. That’s nothing compared to the guilt Juri and Sho feel, so Hamada keeps it to himself and focuses on the positive outcome—the man Sho had hit was properly laid to rest by his friends and family who had spent the year thinking he’d just moved away and didn’t tell anyone.

“Is it true you helped Sho-chan hide a body?” Kotaki whispers loudly backstage at the next Shounen Club filming. Half of Travis Japan turns to look in interest.

“Is it true you’re sleeping with Shori-kun?” Hamada shoots back.

The juniors cackle and Kotaki laughs obnoxiously. “Rumors, huh?”

“Yeah,” Hamada agrees, and they leave each other to their secrets.


End file.
